Plotting The Short Short

(How to write a real short story in under 1000 words)

by Mary Rosenblum

 

 

Here you are, faced with Assignment Two for your Long Ridge course…write a complete short story in 1000 words.  Or perhaps you’ve just run across a short short contest or market with a fat prize or paycheck for that story under 1500 words.  So where do you start?  Write an entire story in 1000 words?  That’s something like four pages of double spaced prose!  How is that possible?

 

Getting to The Point by Starting There

 

Actually, writing the short short isn’t all that difficult and it’s a great exercise to improve your ability to plot short stories of all lengths.  When you contemplate a story that must begin, end, and include a conflict and resolution, all in 1000 words, you simply don’t have room for any unnecessary material!  So this is a marvelous way to learn to identify that extra ‘flab’ and to discover that you actually don’t need it in order to make your story work! While those extra details may add to the story, they don’t have to be there, so if word count matters…you can leave them out!

 

Since you don’t have lots of words to set up your problem, and your setting…don’t!  Jump right into the climax.  That’s right…the climax…the high point of the story.  As the climax unfolds, you have plenty of time to let us figure out the problem and the reason our hero or heroine is here!  If our character is fighting for his life with a dragon, do we need to know right now how he got there?  Let him finish the fight and then let him tell us how he got there.  Maybe he and the dragon have a conversation as they duel.  Maybe he thinks about his past as he hides from the dragon in a crack in the rock. You can figure out a way to give us that ‘back story’ that would be the front part of a longer story, but must be back story in this short short form! 

 

The Litmus Test:  Character Change

 

So what makes it a story, instead of a short scene?  What is the difference, anyway? 

 

The critical ‘litmus test’ for story versus vignette or scene, is character change.  Our character is a different person at the end of a story than he is at the beginning.  In a scene, our character might struggle with an assault, might fight off that assailant and triumph, but if he is the same person at the end that he was at the beginning, then this is technically a scene and not a story, even though we have a clear conflict and resolution.  So it’s fine to begin with your climax and imply the rest of the story, but do let your character change in some way!  He or she should view the world with a slightly different perspective…that is what ‘change’ means. 

 

Most novice short short writers run into trouble in two ways.  They try to follow the classic short story form…building to that climax and then resolving it.  But the shorter your story, the less time you have to build to it.  When you are talking a 500 word story, for example, you have NO time to build to anything.  Or, they begin with the conflict…for example, our dragon fight…but the character doesn’t change.  He is the same dragon fighter at the end that he was at the beginning.  So we have a scene rather than a story.  But if our dragon fighter realizes that dragons aren’t monsters but are actually a sentient species and his people have it all wrong…well, there you have a story!  Our character is no longer the same person as he was in line one!

 

Here is an actual example of a short short I wrote…500 words long.  We have a conflict and a resolution and it’s a character driven coming of age story.  Our conflict here is our main character’s discovery of his family’s poverty – what it means to others. The resolution is that he finds pride in himself and his father, no matter what society might think.  And we have a character change..the critical test for what makes a story.  At the end of the story, Jeremy, our main character has seen his father through society’s eyes rather than the eyes of a young, adoring son.  He realizes that to some, his father is not the perfect being he has been to Jeremy.  So Jeremy has changed.  He has matured a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

The Auction

 

by Mary Rosenblum

 

 

            Kathunk!  The steer's heels slammed into the thick boards of the loading chute.  Jeremy clung to his perch as the huge white-face bawled, strings of drool spattering his worn jeans. 

            "Hey there, kid."  A strong arm scooped him from his perch, deposited him on the dirt floored aisle of the Woodburn auction barn.  "You're going to get hurt, doing that."

            Jeremy looked up, 'cause the man didn't sound mad, smiled at him.  "It's okay," he said.  "I'm here with my dad.  We come every week.  Dad gets great deals."

            "Okay."  The man was looking at him funny. "Want to help me unload?  Five bucks."

            Five dollars?  "Sure!"  Jeremy tried for a grownup tone.  "Let's go."

            He followed  the man through the maze of narrow aisles, thick with livestock and manure smells, out into the graveled lot.  Looked around at the lines of gooseneck cattle rigs, horse trailers.   The man climbed into a brand new pickup, all chrome and shiny green paint, with a matching two horse.  Eyes wide, Jeremy waved him back to the loading chute, just like he did for Dad. 

            "You're a pro," the man said as he got out.  "Every week, huh?  How old are you?"

            "Eleven."  Almost true.  Jeremy scrambled up onto the chute "Wow!"  He peered into the trailer.  Goats, gentle eyed, pure white.  "Milkers!"

            "My daughter's 4H project," the man said shortly.  "She got bored."

            Bored? “Mom really wants a milk goat.  I could cut grass for it mornings before school, and we'd have milk every day." 

            The man was looking at him again.

            "Hey!"  Dad's shout.  "Where'd you git to?"

            Jeremy waved.

            "That damn meat buyer from Molalla bought every critter that wouldn't die on the way home."  Dad spat, rubbed his hands on his faded jeans.  "He botherin' you, mister?"

            "Not at all.  I asked him to give me a hand."  The man cleared his throat, fished a thick wad of bills from his pocket, handed one to Jeremy.  "Good job."

            "This is a ten, not a five."  Jeremy looked up at him. 

            "You earned it.

            "No, he didn't." Dad stepped forward.  "You offered him five, he earned five.  We don't need charity, mister." 

            Jeremy held out the ten, stomach hurting.  Took the bill the man gave him and stuffed it in his pocket without looking. 

            "You know, these goats aren't worth much."  The man cleared his throat again.  "Why don't I trade you one for that five?"

            Jeremy looked at his father, seeing him, the worn out shirt, the jeans Mom patched twice now, the ragged sneakers, not even boots.  He straightened his shoulders, looked the man in the eye.  "Milkers, they bring thirty bucks," he said. "Thanks, anyway, mister."  Then he turned and followed his father across the sun-baked lot to their empty pickup, head up, his back straight.

 

 

This story actually does have a build to the climax moment of the proffered ten and Dad’s response, which makes Jeremy realize the difference between our wealthy suburbanite and his father in his worn and patched clothes.  The first part of this story establishes the quick bond between Jeremy and the stranger and lets us see Jeremy’s relative poverty in Jeremy’s thoughts and comments, and the man’s reaction to him.  He feels sorry for Jeremy, which is why he offers that extra money and then the goat. But Dad sees that as pity, charity, and rejects it.  That rejection and his father’s tone makes Jeremy compare the two men with a suddenly adult eye, seeing Dad’s scruffiness next to the successful man with the brand new shiny and expensive truck and trailer.  Here is the climax.  Jeremy will either hang his head and accept his place as a poor kid, the son of a failed farmer, or he will stand up to that charity with pride as his father has tried to do.

 

He chooses to be proud of his father, and thus of himself, lifting his chin to thank the man and reject his offer, making it clear that he recognizes it for what it is…a gift, but one made to his poverty.  He walks tall across that dusty parking lot to the empty truck.

 

And there you have it, beginning, middle, end, conflict, climax, resolution, and character change.  All in 500 words. 

 

Keep that in mind when you sit down with Assignment Two or that contest entry in front of you.  Start with the climax!  Let the character change.  You’re home free!